The Long Arms of al Qaeda

The terror group is increasingly looking to its affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula and east Africa.

By

Robin Simcox

September 26, 2011

Osama bin Laden once said that "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." It would take a vivid imagination to see al Qaeda as a strong horse at the moment. As it becomes increasingly clear that the outfit's core leadership in Pakistan are in decline, its position as a primary national security threat to the West now depends on the cogency of its regional franchises and allies.

A tumultuous decade of invasion, rendition, missiles, waterboarding, drones and detention has finally taken its toll on the terrorist network. The United States and its allies have killed or detained scores of al Qaeda's founders and senior leaders, and replacements are not easy to find. The group was so reliant on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, their chief strategist, that variations of his terrorist plans were still being attempted at least three years after his capture. Al Qaeda are still trying to harness ricin, a weapon of limited use, nearly 10 years after the failure of a planned ricin attack in London. For a group famed for its creativity, al Qaeda central looks fresh out of ideas. The burden of continuing their struggle will increasingly fall on their affiliates.

The group of most immediate concern to America is al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has seized control of a number of towns in southern Yemen and which the Obama administration now regards as the gravest threat to the U.S. The underwear-bomb plot of 2009 and cargo-bomb plot of 2010 demonstrated AQAP's ability to project power beyond Yemen. Their popular American-born preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki, gives the group a Western appeal. The current head of AQAP actually requested that Awlaki replace him as the leader of the group, believing Awlaki had greater pulling power, though bin Laden personally quashed the move.

Yet AQAP's success has meant that they must increasingly face the onslaught of the U.S. military and counterterrorism apparatus. The potential departure of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a U.S. ally, ironically puts AQAP in greater peril. As White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said this month, "We reserve the right to take unilateral action [against al Qaeda] if or when other governments are unwilling or unable to take the necessary actions themselves." With Yemen in political flux, the U.S. is left to do more of the heavy lifting against terror groups. The Americans are likely to do so with greater efficiency than Saleh, who often used American counterterrorism money to crush internal dissent. The U.S. already had a presence on the ground, and is now ramping up its drone attacks.

ENLARGE

Somali women gather at an al Shabaab rally.
AFP/Getty Images

In their search for effective affiliates, al Qaeda has embarked upon a courtship of al Shabaab, the Islamist group that controls large parts of Somalia. Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Rahman attempted to persuade al Shabaab leaders to widen their focus onto the global jihad and rename themselves al Qaeda in East Africa. These advances have so far been rebuffed, with al Shabaab leaders fearing it could further divide an already highly factionalized group and make it a higher-profile target for the West. However, there has been increasing contact between senior leadership of al Shabaab and al Qaeda: The two groups have provided each other with more rhetorical support, and al Qaeda leaders have found shelter in Somalia. There also now appears to be growing cooperation between al Shabaab, AQAP and Boko Haram, the militant Islamist group in Nigeria.

The situation in the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula also presents al Qaeda with an opportunity. A statement was recently released from "al Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula," and U.S. officials have stated that there is "no longer any doubt" that al Qaeda are operating there. The Sinai was used as a base for the recent terrorist attacks against Israel, and al Qaeda's Ayman al Zawahiri has praised the bombing of gas pipelines there that supplies Israel. While al Qaeda's central shura has yet to grant formal approval of a Sinai Peninsula franchise, the arrival of a new branch in the heart of the Arab world must be an appealing prospect.

These growing threats make it likely that America's war strategy will look very different in this decade than it did in the previous one. It is difficult to imagine an Afghanistan-style land invasion of Somalia or Yemen. Instead, the U.S. will rely on drones, missile strikes and special operations forces. The U.S. already struck a significant blow in this new war against al Qaeda affiliates last month, when a drone attack in Pakistan killed Atiyah Abdul Rahman, the key link between the al Qaeda core and all its regional franchises.

The U.S. will also use proxy armies. For example, America is not only encouraging neighbors such as Kenya and Ethiopia to train Somali refugees and send them back to fight al Shabaab—it is offering to provide the training itself.

Learning the lessons of the previous decade will also be key. Islamist groups manipulate historic grievances to gain support. Therefore, as in Afghanistan, the U.S. must encourage its regional partners to establish grass-roots grievance procedures for disenfranchised citizens. It is an unpleasant reality that the likes of drones risk a level of collateral damage that will stop terrorist plots in the short term but inflame extremism in the long term. The U.S. must consistently aspire to better intelligence-gathering to avoid this. Yet it must also avoid the trap of thinking that the soundest policy is the one that makes America most liked. There is only so much the U.S. can do to change its perception in the eyes of poorly educated, impoverished teenagers versed in radical ideology.

What the U.S. can do is identify those who seek to cause it harm and prevent them from acquiring the capacity to do so. If the U.S. is as effective at doing so in the next 10 years as it was in the previous decade, the question of the strong horse will be settled decisively.

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